A Soviet city police officer waited for Canada's superstar ballet sweethearts and slippered Sole Mates as their ill-timed, illegal couru finished at the opposite curb.

The charge? Jaywalking. The fine? One ruble each.

"We had to pay the policeman right then and there," recalled Augustyn while visiting his 86-year-old mom in Hamilton this week.

"I thought it was funny. We both kept the ticket."

Those were the only missteps the world-famous Gold Dust Twins made on the raked stage of the Moscow International Ballet Competition 40 years ago.

Augustyn and Kain won for best pas de deux.

They danced the intricate Blue Bird from Sleeping Beauty.

Forty years ago? The City of Cambridge, where Augustyn has regularly visited to teach young dancers in recent years, was just born of an amalgamation pas de trois.

Galt, Preston and Hespeler have been twirling around ever since.

On Friday, the 60-year-old Augustyn will be in Cambridge again for the Mayor's Celebration of the Arts at city hall. This is truly an anniversary tour for one of the greatest moments in the history of the National Ballet of Canada.

You thought the hockey guys had it tough in the 1972 Summit Series?

The ice was not literally tilted against them. A year later, the floor was truly tilted against Augustyn and Kain, the steel-willed partners from Hamilton.

Not only were nine of 16 judges from the long-gone Soviet Union.

But Augustyn and Kain — mentored by Soviet-born ballet icon Rudolf Nureyev — had never danced on a stage that was tilted toward the front.

"We saw other dancers doing it," he said. "But they were brought up dancing on a slope."

Ninety-six dancers showed up. Seven couples remained at the end.

Slant or not, the only thing Couple No. 26 from Canada lost was weight. Meat, fruit and vegetables were scarce in Moscow. The best restaurants offered was chicken soup.

"We could always somehow get caviar," laughed Augustyn, who today runs the dance department at Long Island's Adelphi University in New York.

And bread, boiled eggs, cucumber, sausage and potatoes.

Orange juice was pretty scarce too.

Luckily, Augustyn and Kain brought along a heaping supply of Tang. If the powdered-orange drink was good enough for the astronauts like John Glenn to use in space, he was certain it would good enough to sustain the Gold Dust Twins in their Moscow ordeal.

Maybe Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig will serve some on Friday.

"I don't want to drink any more Tang," Augustyn chuckled.

On Thursday, Augustyn and Kain will tape a video feature together in Toronto. Kain, 62, is busy there as artistic director for the National Ballet of Canada.

Their 1970s romance long-ago ended, but they are still good friends. Kain's entrancing intrinsic charm remains.

"Charisma — that's a gift," Augustyn said. "She has sexuality, which was brought forward on stage."

And, 40 years ago, when fame's inescapable twister entrapped them, Canada's slipper-wearing answer to Astaire and Rogers had each other on and off the stage.

"We didn't know what was out there confronting us," Augustyn said. "All of a sudden, we were stars. We were the Gold Dust Twins. We just held on to each other to get comfort."

So, they held hands to cross a Moscow street. They paid their one-ruble fines.

After the competition, they travelled to Paris and met Nureyev backstage after one of his legendary performances. They told him of their one-ruble jaywalking fines.